From wondering when a crew would show up in their neighborhood, to wondering whether Lansing Board of Water & Light even knew where all of their outages were, the lack of communication has been one of the primary complaints among BWL customers.

Which is why Lansing resident Dan Ryan decided to take it upon himself to fill the void for customers.

Ryan and his family were going on ten days without power before crews showed up in his neighborhood Tuesday night.

"I don't really think anyone could've predicted that it would've taken this long," he said.

For BWL customers both figuratively and literally left in the dark since the power outages began, Ryan decided to drive around each night to neighborhoods and intersections BWL listed on their website as not having power to find crews and--hopefully--more information on restoration times and which neighborhoods they were headed to next.

"It's the least I could do is occupy my own time by trying to help others," he said. "I take the individual streets, map them out on Google Maps... that's all the information we really have from them."

Once he obtained information from crews, the ceremonial posting to social media began to BWL's Facebook page and to the Twitter account he created, @BWLOutage.

"People are angry and losing hope and if I can be at least one optimistic voice, I feel like that's helping others," he said.

Ryan said there have been a handful of other Lansing area residents who have stepped up to conduct similar patrols. Ryan's efforts come in the wake of East Lansing resident Jeff Siarto, who created his own BWL outage map using Google Maps last week.

Ryan said he won't stop scouting, as he calls it, until all power has been restored.

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